My mother ill at her home on the plantation near here — where
I have come to see her. But to go back first to my trip home from Flat Rock to
Camden. At the station, I saw men sitting on a row of coffins smoking, talking,
and laughing, with their feet drawn up tailor-fashion to keep them out of the
wet. Thus does war harden people's hearts.
Met James Chesnut at Wilmington. He only crossed the river
with me and then went back to Richmond. He was violently opposed to sending our
troops into Pennsylvania: wanted all we could spare sent West to make an end
there of our enemies. He kept dark about Vallandigham.1 I am sure we could not trust him to do us any
good, or to do the Yankees any harm. The Coriolanus business is played out. As
we came to Camden, Molly sat by me in the cars. She touched me, and, with her
nose in the air, said: “Look, Missis.” There was the inevitable bride and groom
— at least so I thought — and the irrepressible kissing and lolling against
each other which I had seen so often before. I was rather astonished at Molly's
prudery, but there was a touch in this scene which was new. The man required
for his peace of mind that the girl should brush his cheek with those beautiful
long eyelashes of hers. Molly became so outraged in her blue-black modesty that
she kept her head out of the window not to see! When we were detained at a
little wayside station, this woman made an awful row about her room. She seemed
to know me and appealed to me; said her brother-in-law was adjutant to Colonel
K, etc. Molly observed, “You had better go yonder, ma'am, where your husband is
calling you.” The woman drew herself up proudly, and, with a toss, exclaimed: “Husband,
indeed! I'm a widow. That is my cousin. I loved my dear husband too well to
marry again, ever, ever!” Absolutely tears came into her eyes. Molly, loaded as
she was with shawls and bundles, stood motionless, and said: “After all that
gwine-on in the kyars! O, Lord, I should a let it go ‘twas my husband and me!
nigger as I am.”
Here I was at home, on a soft bed, with every physical
comfort; but life is one long catechism there, due to the curiosity of
stay-at-home people in a narrow world. In Richmond, Molly and Lawrence
quarreled. He declared he could not put up with her tantrums. Unfortunately I
asked him, in the interests of peace and a quiet house, to bear with her
temper; I did, said I, but she was so good and useful. He was shabby enough to
tell her what I had said at their next quarrel. The awful reproaches she
overwhelmed me with then! She said she '”was mortified that I had humbled her
before Lawrence.”
But the day of her revenge came. At negro balls in Richmond,
guests were required to carry “passes,” and, in changing his coat Lawrence
forgot his pass. Next day Lawrence was missing, and Molly came to me laughing
to tears. “Come and look,” said
she. “Here is the fine gentleman tied
between two black niggers and marched off to jail.” She laughed and jeered so
she could not stand without holding on to the window. Lawrence disregarded her and
called to me at the top of his voice: “Please, ma'am, ask Mars Jeems to come
take me out of this. I ain't done nothin'.”
As soon as Mr. Chesnut came home I told him of Lawrence's
sad fall, and he went at once to his rescue. There had been a fight and a
disturbance at the ball. The police had been called in, and when every negro
was required to show his “pass,” Lawrence had been taken up as having none. He
was terribly chopfallen when he came home walking behind Mr. Chesnut. He is
always so respectable and well-behaved and stands on his dignity. I went over
to Mrs. Preston's at Columbia. Camden had become simply intolerable to me.
There the telegram found me, saying I must go to my mother, who was ill at her
home here in Alabama. Colonel Goodwyn, his wife, and two daughters were going,
and so I joined the party. I telegraphed Mr. Chesnut for Lawrence, and he
replied, forbidding me to go at all; it was so hot, the cars so disagreeable,
fever would be the inevitable result. Miss Kate Hampton, in her soft voice,
said: “The only trouble in life is when one can't decide in which way duty
leads. Once know your duty, then all is easy.”
I do not know whether she thought it my duty to obey my
husband. But I thought it my duty to go to my mother, as I risked nothing but
myself. We had two days of an exciting drama under our very noses, before our
eyes. A party had come to Columbia who said they had run the blockade, had come
in by flag of truce, etc. Colonel Goodwyn asked me to look around and see if I
could pick out the suspected crew. It was easily done. We were all in a sadly
molting condition. We had come to the end of our good clothes in three years,
and now our only resource was to turn them upside down, or inside out, and in
mending, darning, patching, etc. Near me on the train to Alabama sat a young
woman in a traveling dress of bright yellow; she wore a profusion of curls, had
pink cheeks, was delightfully airy and easy in her manner, and was absorbed in
a flirtation with a Confederate major, who, in spite of his nice, new gray
uniform and two stars, had a very Yankee face, fresh, clean-cut, sharp, utterly
unsunburned, florid, wholesome, handsome. What more in compliment can one say
of one's enemies? Two other women faced this man and woman, and we knew them to
be newcomers by their good clothes. One of these women was a German. She it was
who had betrayed them. I found that out afterward. The handsomest of the three
women had a hard, Northern face, but all were in splendid array as to feathers,
flowers, lace, and jewelry. If they were spies why were they so foolish as to
brag of New York, and compare us unfavorably with the other side all the time,
and in loud, shrill accents? Surely
that was not the way to pass unnoticed in the Confederacy. A man came in, stood
up, and read from a paper, “The surrender of Vicksburg.”2 I felt as
if I had been struck a hard blow on the top of my head, and my heart took one
of its queer turns. I was utterly unconscious: not long, I dare say. The first
thing I heard was exclamations of joy and exultation from the overdressed
party. My rage and humiliation were great. A man within earshot of this party had
slept through everything. He had a greyhound face, eager and inquisitive when
awake, but now he was as one of the seven sleepers. Colonel Goodwyn wrote on a
blank page of my book (one of De Quincey's — the note is there now), that the
sleeper was a Richmond detective.
Finally, hot and tired out, we arrived at West Point, on the
Chattahoochee River. The dusty cars were quite still, except for the giggling
flirtation of the yellow gown and her major. Two Confederate officers walked
in. I felt mischief in the air. One touched the smart major, who was whispering
to Yellow Gown. The major turned quickly. Instantly, every drop of blood left
his face; a spasm seized his throat; it was a piteous sight. And at once I was
awfully sorry for him. He was marched out of the car. Poor Yellow Gown's color
was fast, but the whites of her eyes were lurid. Of the three women spies we
never heard again. They never do anything worse to women, the high-minded
Confederates, than send them out of the country. But when we read soon
afterward of the execution of a male spy, we thought of the “major.”
At Montgomery the boat waited for us, and in my haste I
tumbled out of the omnibus with Dr. Robert Johnson's assistance, but nearly
broke my neck. The thermometer was high up in the nineties, and they gave me a
stateroom over the boiler. I paid out my Confederate rags of money freely to
the maid in order to get out of that oven. Surely, go where we may hereafter,
an Alabama steamer in August lying under the bluff with the sun looking down,
will give one a foretaste, almost an adequate idea, of what's to come, as far
as heat goes. The planks of the floor burned one's feet under the bluff at
Selma, where we stayed nearly all day — I do not know why. Met James Boykin,
who had lost 1,200 bales of cotton at Vicksburg, and charged it all to Jeff
Davis in his wrath, which did not seem exactly reasonable to me. At Portland
there was a horse for James Boykin, and he rode away, promising to have a
carriage sent for me at once. But he had to go seven miles on horseback before
he reached my sister Sally's, and then Sally was to send back. On that lonely
riverside Molly and I remained with dismal swamps on every side, and immense
plantations, the white people few or none. In my heart I knew my husband was
right when he forbade me to undertake this journey. There was one living thing
at this little riverside inn — a white man who had a store opposite, and oh,
how drunk he was! Hot as it was, Molly kept up a fire of pine knots. There was
neither lamp nor candle in that deserted house. The drunken man reeled over now
and then, lantern in hand; he would stand with his idiotic, drunken glare, or
go solemnly staggering round us, but always bowing in his politeness. He nearly
fell over us, but I sprang out of his way as he asked, “Well, madam, what can I
do for you?”
Shall I ever forget the headache of that night and the
fright? My temples throbbed with dumb misery. I sat upon a chair, Molly on the
floor, with her head resting against my chair. She was as near as she could get
to me, and I kept my hand on her. “Missis,” said she, “now I do believe you are
scared, scared of that poor, drunken thing. If he was sober I could whip him in
a fair fight, and drunk as he is I kin throw him over the banister, ef he so
much as teches you. I don't value him a button!”
Taking heart from such brave words I laughed. It seemed an
eternity, but the carriage came by ten o'clock, and then, with the coachman as
our sole protector, we poor women drove eight miles or more over a carriage
road, through long lanes, swamps of pitchy darkness, with plantations on every
side. The house, as we drew near, looked like a graveyard in a nightmare, so
vague and phantom-like were its outlines. I found my mother ill in bed, feeble
still, but better than I hoped to see her. “I knew you would come,” was her
greeting, with outstretched hands. Then I went to bed in that silent house, a
house of the dead it seemed. I supposed I was not to see my sister until the next
day. But she came in some time after I had gone to bed. She kissed me quietly,
without a tear. She was thin and pale, but her voice was calm and kind. As she
lifted the candle over her head, to show me something on the wall, I saw that
her pretty brown hair was white. It was awfully hard not to burst out into
violent weeping. She looked so sweet, and yet so utterly brokenhearted. But as
she was without emotion, apparently, it would not become me to upset her by my
tears. Next day, at noon, Hetty, mother's old maid, brought my breakfast to my
bedside. Such a breakfast it was! Delmonico could do no better. “It is ever so
late, I know,” to which Hetty replied: “Yes, we would not let Molly wake you.” “What
a splendid cook you have here.” “My daughter, Tenah, is Miss Sally's cook.
She's well enough as times go, but when our Miss Mary comes to see us I does it
myself,” and she courtesied down to the floor. “Bless your old soul,” I cried,
and she rushed over and gave me a good hug. She is my mother's factotum; has
been her maid since she was six years old, when she was bought from a Virginia
speculator along with her own mother and all her brothers and sisters. She has
been pampered until she is a rare old tyrant at times. She can do everything
better than any one else, and my mother leans on her heavily. Hetty is Dick's
wife; Dick is the butler. They have over a dozen children and take life very
easily. Sally came in before I was out of bed, and began at once in the same
stony way, pale and cold as ice, to tell me of the death of her children. It
had happened not two weeks before. Her eyes were utterly without life; no
expression whatever, and in a composed and sad sort of manner she told the tale
as if it were something she had read and wanted me to hear:
“My eldest daughter, Mary, had grown up to be a lovely girl.
She was between thirteen and fourteen, you know. Baby Kate had my sister's gray
eyes; she was evidently to be the beauty of the family. Strange it is that here
was one of my children who has lived and has gone and you have never seen her
at all. She died first, and I would not go to the funeral. I thought it would
kill me to see her put under the ground. I was lying down, stupid with grief
when Aunt Charlotte came to me after the funeral with this news: ‘Mary has that
awful disease, too.’ There was nothing to say. I got up and dressed instantly
and went to Mary. I did not leave her side again in that long struggle between
life and death. I did everything for her with my own hands. I even prepared my
darling for the grave. I went to her funeral, and I came home and walked
straight to my mother and I begged her to be comforted; I would bear it all
without one word if God would only spare me the one child left me now.''
Sally has never shed a tear, but has grown twenty years
older, cold, hard, careworn. With the same rigidity of manner, she began to go
over all the details of Mary's illness. “I had not given up hope, no, not at
all. As I sat by her side, she said: ‘Mamma, put your hand on my knees; they
are so cold.’ I put my hand on her knee; the cold struck to my heart. I knew it
was the coldness of death.” Sally put out her hand on me, and it seemed to
recall the feeling. She fell forward in an agony of weeping that lasted for
hours. The doctor said this reaction was a blessing; without it she must have
died or gone mad. While the mother was so bitterly weeping, the little girl,
the last of them, a bright child of three or four, crawled into my bed. “Now,
Auntie,” she whispered, “I want to tell you all about Mamie and Katie, but they
watch me so. They say I must never talk about them. Katie died because she ate
blackberries, I know that, and then Aunt Charlotte read Mamie a letter and that
made her die, too. Maum Hetty says they have gone to God, but I know the people
saved a place between them in the ground for me.”
Uncle William was in despair at the low ebb of patriotism
out here. “West of the Savannah River,” said he, “it is property first, life
next, honor last.” He gave me an excellent pair of shoes. What a gift! For more
than a year I have had none but some dreadful things Armstead makes for me, and
they hurt my feet so. These do not fit, but that is nothing; they are large
enough and do not pinch anywhere. I have absolutely a respectable pair of
shoes!!
Uncle William says the men who went into the war to save their
negroes are abjectly wretched. Neither side now cares a fig for these beloved
negroes, and would send them all to heaven in a hand-basket, as Custis Lee
says, to win in the fight.
General Lee and Mr. Davis want the negroes put into the
army. Mr. Chesnut and Major Venable discussed the subject one night, but would
they fight on our side or desert to the enemy? They don't go to the enemy,
because they are comfortable as they are, and expect to be free anyway. When we
were children our nurses used to give us tea out in the open air on little pine
tables scrubbed as clean as milk-pails. Sometimes, as Dick would pass us, with
his slow and consequential step, we would call out, “Do, Dick, come and wait on
us.” “No, little missies, I never wait on pine tables. Wait till you get big
enough to put your legs under your pa's mahogany.”
I taught him to read as soon as I could read myself, perched
on his knife-board. He won't look at me now; but looks over my head, scenting
freedom in the air. He was always very ambitious. I do not think he ever
troubled himself much about books. But then, as my father said, Dick, standing
in front of his sideboard, has heard all subjects in earth or heaven discussed,
and by the best heads in our world. He is proud, too, in his way. Hetty, his
wife, complained that the other men servants looked finer in their livery. “Nonsense,
old woman, a butler never demeans himself to wear livery. He is always in plain
clothes.” Somewhere he had picked that up.
He is the first negro in whom I have felt a change. Others
go about in their black masks, not a ripple or an emotion showing, and yet on
all other subjects except the war they are the most excitable of all races. Now
Dick might make a very respectable Egyptian Sphinx, so inscrutably silent is
he. He did deign to inquire about General Richard Anderson. “He was my young master
once,” said he. “I always will like him better than anybody else.”
When Dick married Hetty, the Anderson house was next door.
The two families agreed to sell either Dick or Hetty, whichever consented to be
sold. Hetty refused outright, and the Andersons sold Dick that he might be with
his wife. This was magnanimous on the Andersons' part, for Hetty was only a
lady's-maid and Dick was a trained butler, on whom Mrs. Anderson had spent no
end of pains in his dining-room education, and, of course, if they had refused
to sell Dick, Hetty would have had to go to them. Mrs. Anderson was very much
disgusted with Dick's ingratitude when she found he was willing to leave them.
As a butler he is a treasure; he is overwhelmed with dignity, but that does not
interfere with his work at all. My father had a body-servant, Simon, who could
imitate his master's voice perfectly. He would sometimes call out from the yard
after my father had mounted his horse: “Dick, bring me my overcoat. I see you
there, sir, hurry up.” When Dick hastened out, overcoat in hand, and only Simon
was visible, after several obsequious “Yes, marster; just as marster pleases,”
my mother had always to step out and prevent a fight. Dick never forgave her
laughing. Once in Sumter, when my father was very busy preparing a law case,
the mob in the street annoyed him, and he grumbled about it as Simon was making
up his fire. Suddenly he heard, as it were, himself speaking, “the Hon. S. D.
Miller — Lawyer Miller,” as the colored gentleman announced himself in the dark
— appeal to the gentlemen outside to go away and leave a lawyer in peace to
prepare his case for the next day. My father said he could have sworn the sound
was that of his own voice. The crowd dispersed, but some noisy negroes came
along, and upon them Simon rushed with the sulky whip, slashing around in the
dark, calling himself “Lawyer Miller,” who was determined to have peace. Simon
returned, complaining that “them niggers run so he never got in a hundred yards
of one of them.”
At Portland, we met a man who said: “Is it not strange that
in this poor, devoted land of ours, there are some men who are making money by
blockade-running, cheating our embarrassed government, and skulking the fight?”
__________
1 Clement Baird Vallandigham was an Ohio Democrat
who represented the extreme wing of Northern sympathizers with the South. He
was arrested by United States troops in May, 1863, court-martialed and banished
to the Confederacy. Not being well received in the South, he went to Canada,
but after the war returned to Ohio
2 Vicksburg surrendered on July 4, 1863. Since
the close of 1862, it had again and again been assaulted by Grant and Sherman.
It was commanded by Johnston and Pemberton, Pemberton being in command at the
time of the surrender. John C. Pemberton was a native of Philadelphia, a
graduate of West Point, and had served in the Mexican War.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 216-26
